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THE ROLE OF SOCIAL IDENTITY
IN ADOLESCENT SMOKING BEHAVIOR
by
Meghan Bridgid Moran
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
August, 2009
Copyright 2009 Meghan Bridgid Moran

This dissertation introduces social identity (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel and Turner, 1979) as a useful construct for both understanding and preventing adolescent smoking. Social identity, understood in this research as the strength of identification with a social category, has been found to be useful in predicting other forms of behavior but has never been used to understand adolescent smoking behavior. This dissertation builds on research that has found peer crowd affiliation to affect smoking behavior, using Social Identity Theory to understand the extent to which an adolescent's strength of identification with a social category (SISC) affects likelihood of being susceptible to smoking, having tried smoking and being an established smoker. Specifically, this dissertation hypothesizes (1) that social identity will impact smoking behavior, (2) that social identity will interact with sensation seeking to impact smoking behavior, (3) that social identity will lend predictive validity to the ability of the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction to predict intentions to smoke, (4) that social identity will interact with social norms to impact smoking behavior, and (5) that social identity will interact with exposure to the truth(TM) anti-smoking campaign to impact smoking behavior.; To test these hypotheses, a cross-sectional survey of 224 14 and 15 year olds was conducted. Results of this survey indicate that social identity is independently related to smoking behavior after controlling for factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, school achievement, religiosity, living with a smoker, sensation seeking and social norms. Certain identities, such as artist, musician and nerd were associated with decreased smoking behavior while other identities such as rebel and hipster were associated with increased smoking behavior. Additionally, inclusion of social identity increased the predictive ability of a basic Integrative Model containing social norms, attitudes and self efficacy. Finally, social identity was also found to interact with sensation seeking, social norms and exposure to the truth(TM) campaign to impact smoking behavior. These findings indicate that social identity plays an important role in an adolescent's smoking behavior. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of the theoretical, practical and methodological implications of these findings.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL IDENTITY
IN ADOLESCENT SMOKING BEHAVIOR
by
Meghan Bridgid Moran
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
August, 2009
Copyright 2009 Meghan Bridgid Moran